The Sunday Slide: A Little Bit About Motivation

Let’s start my first column of 2025 with a little chat about motivation.

“Motivation” is a tricky word in sports. From an outsider’s perspective, it’s hard to hear “motivation” and not immediately assume it’s fabricated. You know, coach speak.

“Nobody’s talking about us,” teams sometimes say despite overwhelming talent and a ticket all but punched to championship weekend. It’s enough to make a journalist with any modicum of experience yawn. (In their heads, I mean. Definitely don’t do that on the phone or in front of someone.)

But I recently realized that just about all motivation is fabricated in some way. When I hit a rut in my job, lacking innovative ideas and the general drive to progress, I had to come up with ways to motivate myself. I had to tell myself things and set goals for myself that others weren’t driving me toward. It was all internal. That, for me, is where true motivation comes from.

And then I took a step back to view the wider landscape of women’s lacrosse. Every player, every team, comes up with their own motivation, too.

North Carolina’s certainly hungry to show everyone that injuries indeed played a factor in last year’s uncharacteristic season – and they’re off to a hot start with back-to-back thumpings of James Madison and Liberty.

Madison Taylor is surely driven to prove she can excel without Izzy Scane and Erin Coykendall as running mates. Jordan Basso of Florida? She’s a Division III superstar trying her hand at Division I in her final year of eligibility. That’s motivation enough.

Great athletes and great teams find ways to motivate themselves when they have all the talent in the world but need something extra to play for. We should all strive to do the same in our lives.

I suppose I should stop being so harsh.